Summer 2013 contest entries uploaded

Dear friends,

We have received 14 entries for the Summer 2013 contest; they are now uploaded to Acknex Unlimited:

Acknex Unlimited Demo Page

Please download them, test them and then vote the best one. The poll will start accepting your votes in 48 hours; I want to make sure that all the entries are OK. If your entry isn't listed here or if it has some problems, make sure to drop me an email: george at acknex dot net.

Thank you!

it seems to be a great contest when will be the rerult published?

You are right, there are many great entries. The voting starts tomorrow and ends in 2 weeks.

Really great contributions! I thought my own contribution wouldn't be ready until the deadline. It isn't - but which game/software will be perfect? Good Luck to everyone!

Vote for Prince of Lotteria and receive free complimentary imaginary cupcakes!

i went eny miny moh and landed on mapbuilder ;-)
no cupcakes for me then .

vote for me or i obliterate every single one of your indy gamers dreams and break your coffee
mugs (it just got real bitchaaas) all out of gum !

I am not a person to vote for my own submissions, so my vote goes to Mapbuilder. Great job to everyone for their contributions. Good luck in the contest.

thanks I have also decided to not to vote for myself, and chose a great tool for 3dgs, namely Peragro, because I'm very interested in its development (and in general in any pathfinder system).

I voted for "The Battle for Forgol" since I want to support its development.

It has been hard to choose just one. Many good entries but finally I voted to The Battle for Forgol.

Good luck for all!

Voted for Peragro, we need a good pathfinding solution!

MapBuilder, because, let's face it: WED.

agreed with sid

lol yeah WED haha ..

the competition between mapbuilder and battle for forgal looks fearce for 1st ..but stil time.
thank you for the votes .

As always, here is my full feature review of all games, in alphabetical order (don't take it personal if I might be too harsh in some cases):


2D First Person Adventure - Game Development Kit + music pack
I think that this would have been a good contest entry if you would have added more functionality to the demo. I just can move around and without any interaction, this “game development kit” is rather useless. This gamestyle is very retro and I am sure that there are people who like this, but I am also very sure that people are better off when they rewrite that system from scratch, because I looked into your code. The music tracks are a nice goodie.

2D Toon Platform Resource Kit + 2D 8-Directional Sprite Pack
Some of the sprites are OK, but this is pack is rather useless, too, because the atlas mapping is missing. While it is OK that you put a character animation into a horizontally aligned file (like “ENEMY+8.bmp”), it is not OK for me, that you put into your “2D Toon Environment Sprite Sheets” or “2D 8-Directional Sprite Pack” images into an atlas without a mapping. I guess you used a tool for that – it would have been nice to point that out and the mapping file.

Ants
I remember that George said in his announcement, that you could send in everything, even an Ant-Simulation. Wow, didn’t expected that someone does that actually. I must say that tiny self-running demo is very simple, appealing and great! It was very relaxing and entertaining to see those tiny ants go around and collect the fruits. Very well done!!

MapBuilder 2.2
A very complex strategy game environment editor. It’s handling is rather strange, too, it is very uneasy in my opinion. How am I supposed to rotate things, how can edit models and why can’t I fly-through the scene? I made the experience that I just can add stuff and that I have not much control over it. I also tried to place a map entity and an object on it, but that didn’t worked, too. But in general, it seems that you put lots of time into it and that it’s particular target group (and maybe the reason why you developed it) are strategy game developers. – I hope, that you are indeed making an own game like that, because if you intended to make a multipurpose editor, than you still have a long journey to go. But nevertheless, this thing is very impressive and I wish you the best!

Peragro Beta1
Very nice, thank you very much for making this dll! I didn’t had the chance to test the DLL with my own stuff yet, but I hope it is as easy to use as you say. I just wonder why you used Irrlicht-stuff, because matrix functions are easy to write in Lite-C ;-) are you going to release the source of your DLL? Whatever, it looks like you invested a lot of work into it and this is a very nice contest entry!

Player Code
Well, if I would have submitted “just” a “player code” I would have pushed everything into it that would make a super-freaking-rockin’ legen- wait for it! –dary player code from outer space. But this is lame. Sorry.

Prince of Lotteria - Zorro Edition
The weirdest, best, most meaningless and sarcastically funniest JCL/Zorro/Acknex/Doug/Lottifant/Ackcon Gamestudio game ever made in the universe from the epic AckCon Team. We certainly took the whole "get drunk and make a game" thing to far that weekend this Summer in Bielefeld, but this is THE THING. OMG, how can we make a game any better? And this is also a glorious return of the Warlock.mdl! Or should I say Warghost? Whatever, vote for us if you like Acknex and stupid crazy games featuring JCL and Zorroto! :-D

Resources
The barrels and the crates are very nice for testing things, thanks also for the textures, which are nice! I can not imagine a use for the head (it is too cartoony for testing skin shaders and such) and the other stuff. What kind of license are the resources, a “free as beer” license or what? There were also some missing texture references in the MDLs.

Starlaxis
Wow, this must be THE Gamestudio game with the best and smoothest HUD animations ever done. Seriously, I was really surprised. I never saw or played your game and what you did – amazing! The Intro was catchy, too, very well made. But, I must say, my yaw dropped when I realized, that this game was just like TETRIS, but in a twisted, sick version from hell. I don’t get it, you put so much effort into this with all these animated characters and those outstanding animations and all, but.. hell.. combining commands with blocks? Sorry, that was a really disappointing game experience and it was so frustrating that I quit the game after the first level. Sorry about that. I really thought that this was something like Lylat Wars in 3D or 2D or so (the graphics style is very similar), but Tetris, oh no (don’t get me wrong, I love Tetris)… I really wish you the best with the game but I must say that someone should have told you that this design decision will suck. Just my two cents.

The Battle for Forgol Demo + Over 100 free models
OMG This is AWESOME. Really. You made a quality game here, which is entertaining, has great graphics and nice sound effects and music. The first part in the house was quiet funny and later, when I found the shield and stepped outside, I was not able to pass the part where the bee is attacking – the platform was too narrow to fight… as soon as the bee hit me, I fell all the time down and after the fourth trial I hadn’t the nerves to pass the 5 or 6 wolves at the beginning. Nevertheless, this is a great great game! The menu interaction is also very nice :-) --- The free models are kick ass, too! Thank you so much for sharing, these are quality models, really really good!

The Tomb Of Lost Game Designs
Respect! It takes some guts to release private game designs to the public. Although, not all of them are appealing to me (I guess we have different tastes in game design), these documents are nice examples for how to write your own document. Even if no one will ever take on your designs and make it reality, I guess some will benefit from those documents because they document quiet detailed how to document ideas in written form. That is very hard and people often struggle with this, so, much kudos to you for sharing your game ideas! By the way, “Elementary School Wars” and “Graviton Master” are those with the most potential in my opinion.

The Tomb Of Lost Game Melodies
Wow, these tracks are GOOD! Really really good stuff. Thank you very much for sharing them, I think they fit right into my Fireflight-concept. Nothing else to say! WOW :-D

Virtual Reality
Obviously you put together MistyMood, ShadeX and some objects from MapBuilder and threw in a rather poor player code (I get stuck everywhere). That’s it? :-/ But compared to the other entries it is still way better than the “playercode” “game”.

Yume Toolkit
I saw your screenshots some time ago and was interested already back then. The example game you delivered with the entry is nice, great visual style! Although I wasn’t able to do much, just running around, talking with the dark person and nothing else happened…? Who is this dummy-model guy in the middle of the map and why can’t I talk to him. You should also try to implement a resolution check before the game starts, because the game resolution was far too high (game started in window mode and I had to switch to fullscreen and press several times F5 to get the right resolution). Nevertheless, this looks really promising and I have the feeling that the editor is powerful, too. I am really looking forward for your finished game with this :-) good work!

This is pretty much the first time i can not decide because of all the awesome entries.

Nice reviews!

Sadly I installed Windows 8.1 Preview and with that most of the entries don't work...

@Heelx:
thanks for testing. true words, there are several "special" solutions in my editor. at the moment it is not a multipurpose editor at all, and it has never been the target. when I started its development, I had no experience with 3D world editors, only dealt with modding strategy games, so I wanted a similar approach, because it is easier for me. I know the gui and the documentation is not the best at all, but using your own assets cannot be a problem (just copy your model or map entity in a proper subfolder described here: http://mapbuilder.zxq.net/MBloadtutorial.html, and it will be found by the editor). normally there is a modify button in the bottom right corner to tweak entities after placement (except for grass and shrub sprites). a bit unusual way, so gizmos and one click selection are planned in near future.

the funny thing is that, after I rewrote my rts game related things in this spring (what I'm developing within my editor, but excluded from the contest version), now I could eliminate most of these special things, thus have a possibility to convert it into a more general world editor. but they are only future plans, beside my game project to be started in October...

Don't know about anyone else but I keep getting virus warnings with the Forgol demo, first from the original link to the download agent and now from a download from Acknex.

I am using both AVG and Zonealarm, both of which have given false warnings in their respective histories in the past but surely by now those faults should have long since been resolved so...
any one else having the same probs?

Had the same problem with kaspersky internet security.

Thank you all, this is a great competition, all entries is great, is a honor to be a part of this.

About virus warnings, hmm... this is really strange. I checked several times with three different antivirus software, first soruce code and all files, then again compiled game and all was ok. I download demo from acknex and i again make deep scan with avast and nothing i found. I suppose this is some false warnings but i will check all again.

@Heelx:
Thank you man, thanks for testing! I hope it will be useful models for community. I'm very glad you liked game, and... please let's try again crash this damn evil bee, after it begins a big adventure .

Once again, thank you all for sharing your work, and good luck for all!

thank you and to clarify things : the matrix functions etc will be replaced as soon as i learn how to use gs matrix system i am not very good at vectors and matrixes but am learning ..yes the source is free and availible and i am not done with the complete dll ..source can be downloaded
at the third party tools thread

A really extremely interesting competition this time.

After i checked all entries, sorry but some very ugly for me.

It was not an easy choice, but i came to the conclusion that MapBuilder 2.2 should get my voice.

I hope the best for you sivan, and if you get the pro, would be great as new feature a PhysX editor.

Good luck!

push up my votes to first or second place
and i will resell this prize to forum user
for only less than half its value

thanks Rojart, there are so many things I could include (and to learn first)...
what I plan first are: rewritten shade-c shaders to SM3.0 (today nearly finished), replacing shade-c shadowmapping with exponential shadowmapping (if I can do it at all somehow...), random terrain generation and texturing (probably the TUST library will help a lot), and river bed and mesh creation. (I simply need them for my game)
and a general patfhfinder would be also great (my one is really only for rts), maybe Peragro or a self made.
I have only little experience with physx, but I saw such an editor in other engines.

Your choice, but I think this is not the right thing to act as a contestant.

How about this:

If "Prince of Lotteria - Zorro Edition" makes the first place, I will host a Lotteria Party this Winter at my place with free beer, free sausages, free Coke, fingerfood and a pork JCL (Mettigel-JCL) at my place for everyone who is willing to come!

U should have posted this earlyer, just voted. ^^

Iam sorry for all others but my voice goes to "Battle For Forgol". Even if iam no fan of such games i see the hard work. The quality is on a very high standard and a lot of work seams to be invested. As if made from one piece.

Some really nice projects in here.
The ants are really cool, but i had pushed the project to the next level. Fex with a good forest texture and a picnic basket or something like that. For now its functional but not much more.

peace

Still havnt downloaded Forgol but just going by the images, it gets equal vote with Sivans..But I will turn my firewalls down for the forgol download and check it out....
And as usual, great entries by all our dedicated experienced Members...

I'm in!

aaah helix come on have a laugh would you
i voted for mapbuilder myself .

there is no way i could ever bribe the communty
as 50% comes from the judges hey ?

the guys in the lead deserves this fair and justified , i just thought since we were talking votes i might as well jump in and deliver a false
promis for votes ..

I made a beer promise and I promise my promises, I promise!

For all underaged members i take the word to point to the fact that this here so called is in the top ten list of all most deadly drugs.

Also most common drug used with marijuana, followed by crack, XTC, regular cocaine, heroine, and LSD. Not sure what the top 10 drug list has to do with anything here.

Said the only one who did not give a feedback except of one off topic bad mood post. Guess not everybody understands jokes.

fear caffeine and oxygen ! rehab will get you nowhere !

Being healthy is overrated, you die anyway Zorro! Beer! Lotteria!

nope , woman ! music ! the rest will follow .

there are quicker paths that leads to the grave but hell why rush lifes little pleasures

The only real drug is our patented Dynamic™ Lotty© Sky­® Color™ system

Beer.

Assume Locoweed will wonder what all those posts have to do in here...^^

Is anyone else having any trouble downloading some of these from Ack Unlimited? I keep getting a time-out problem, but it's not my internet that's causing it......